After taking a good look at those LE PLAISIR screengrabs, I'm still unsure how I feel about them. There is certainly less grain and less detail than in MADAME DE but this is more than likely just the source. Ah, I just don't know. I suppose it's time to just stop talking about this and wait for reviews to start trickling in.

They showed all three yesterday at MoMA, projected in 35mm prints, so I wound up spending the whole day watching all three, though I probably dozed off for 15 or 20 minutes during La ronde and The Earrings of Madame de…. Nothing to do with the films themselves, I was already physically tired by the time I got to the theater for La ronde.

La ronde is marvelously entertaining, but having seen it several times already, it feels rather light and frothy compared to the next two. The "middle story" of Le plaisir is still the main attraction for me (and I think it takes up most of the film too), and it seems to get better with repeated viewing. I honestly think it's one of the best things Ophüls has done, there's always more to discover in it. Incredibly entertaining and funny, but also incredibly moving - the church sequence especially and the relationship between Gabin and Darrieux for how much is left unsaid. On its own, it's a stone-cold masterpiece.

Both films do build to The Earrings of Madame de… in a lot of ways. La ronde felt like a dry run for Earrings' plot structure, but this time we're not tracking love's movement but the movement of the earrings from one person's possession to the next, and it's even more rich and devastating to see how their meaning evolves over time, entwined with the changes in Madame de…'s own life.

What stuck out this time though was how compressed things feel. The waltz that dissolves across weeks is a good example, and even the lead up to the duel seems fast. Not rushed, but incredibly fast - I kind of got the sensation of a story hurtling towards a pre-destined doom, moreso given the references to fate and the characters' own surprise at the sometimes frustrating, sometimes miraculous return of the earrings to the jeweler and Madame de… time and time again.

All three were projected in excellent prints, though La ronde didn't have subtitles, so they had to project a set underneath the screen. And for some odd reason, I feel like the subtitling for one of my favorite lines was botched in Le plaisir - when Gabin mentions that all children need religion so they can choose whether to leave it behind when they get older. It seemed like the last bit of that line wasn't subtitled at all. Regardless, if they play them again, definitely catch them.

hearthesilence wrote:... The "middle story" of Le plaisir is still the main attraction for me (and I think it takes up most of the film too), and it seems to get better with repeated viewing. I honestly think it's one of the best things Ophüls has done, there's always more to discover in it...

Agreed. For example, when the troupe of young women departs, Gabin apologizes to one of them for having behaved coarsely, and she replies merci so softly one mightn't catch it on first viewing. Her stunned reaction to a mere apology speaks volumes about her life.

Svet notes in his review about the blacks on the Gaumont disc being weak, particular in comparison to the Criterion. I finished the film earlier today and can confirm it can be added to the long list of films with incorrectly presented black levels. There are no true blacks on the disc as is, even the fades are a milky grey. A change in levels on your Blu-ray player will present the transfer as it was meant to be seen, and hide the compression noise Svet also pointed out (most visible here).

Hello — hope it’s OK to resurrect this thread after several years. I was just wondering if anyone can confirm which transfer of Madame De is on FilmStruck, be it the much maligned blu ray version, or the DVD version in a higher definition? I don’t have firsthand experience with either release; just wondering if the Criterion blu would actually be a downgrade from FilmStruck, and trying to decide if it’s worth seeking out the Gaumont release.

Related: anyone think Criterion might eventually update their release with a better transfer — any precedent for something like that? Maybe the Tati box having an update on Playtime, which was already on blu?

Playtime remains an exception ans was part of a multi-movie deal. Otherwise, the only other BD-to-BD upgraded title is Monterey Pop, making these upgrades extremely rare.
The BFI disc is otherwise a competent release.

I had sort of put the BFI release out of my mind as I don't have a region free player, but it sounds like that might be the best bet for the foreseeable future. That said, I don't hate whatever's on FilmStruck, and would still be curious if anyone knows its provenance; it's just that if there's a transfer out there that does significantly better by the great cinematography, it's definitely a movie that deserves it!.. Thanks a lot for the input!

My understanding is the following :
Criterion licenced for their BD the original Gaumont 2K 2014 restoration, which is absolutely awful.
iTunes uses what looks like an upscale of the older Criterion master, which is better looking. Then Gaumont new re-done restoration beats this. And finally, the BFI managed to get an even better version of the Gaumont new re-done restoration because redoing it from scratch wasn't a big enough incentive for Gaumont to just release it untouched.